Carli. Drug use is a matter of addiction and behavior control. It's like overeating or gambling. It would be ridiculous to declare war on overeating, so it's ridiculous to declare war on drugs.
Syed. The war on drugs is like any war. We will not begin to win until we begin to shoot drug dealers on sight.
Carli. 1. Drug use is a matter of addiction and behavior control.
2. Drug use is like overeating or gambling.
3. It would be ridiculous to declare war on overeating.
C. It's ridiculous to declare war on drugs.
Syed. 1. The war on drugs is like any war.
(2. Wars are only won by shooting people.)
C. We will only win the war on drugs if we shoot drug dealers on sight.
Since we should only ever use violence when we have a clear and compelling reason to do so, Syed bears the burden of proof here because he is the one advocating violence.
Both are making direct arguments.
Evaluation:
Carli. Analogy Argument Syed. Analogy Argument
Analog: dealing with the drug problem Conclusion Thingy: dealing with the drug problem (the "drug war")
Premise Thingy: dealing with overeating Premise Thingy: an actual war
Property: should not be prosecuted with unlimited violence. Property: should be prosecuted with unlimited violence.
Carli. Analogy between overeating and taking illegal drugs.
Important similarities: as Carli says, both are matters of addiction and behavior control. Neither intrinsically involves shooting at other people.
Important differences: overeating is always unhealthy, but illegal drug use is not always unhealthy in itself. 35 percent of the American people are obese, but only 6 percent of Americans even use illegal drugs.
Syed. Analogy between making war on America and taking illegal drugs.
Important similarities: none that I can see.
Important differences: people making war on America actively try to destroy American lives and property. People who take drugs don't necessarily destroy anything.
Carli gives a reasonable argument, given the clear similarities between overeating and drug use. Syed seems to think that use of the slogan "war on drugs" means that there is an actual war going on. The problem with this is that it's not clear whether the war on drugs is
a real war or a war in name only. After all, we had a "war on poverty," and
that didn't require us to shoot anybody. So this argument at least begs the
question of whether the drug war is a case of us being attacked by enemies
who intend to conquer or dominate us, and who cannot be handled by the normal
operations of the police forces. In a real war, we generally encounter the
enemy in the form of soldiers who shoot at us or at least try to force us
to work for them or give them our stuff. Generally, we have to shoot these
guys in order to get them to stop. In the drug war, we generally encounter
the "enemy" in the form of people who try to sell us things, or give us things
in the hope that we will become hooked and have to buy them later. So if
this analogy is good, I will not be able to avoid Jehovah's Witnesses until
I start shooting them. Certainly, there are no similarities between the drug war and a real war. Furthermore, the fact that American soldiers shoot people during a real war doesn't mean that such shooting is justified! Syed actually commits three fallacies here. He equivocates on the word "war," he begs the question of whether the shooting in an actual war is justified, and he draws a false analogy between the war on drugs and a real war.
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